Albert David Stevens 1875 - 1960

Born September 10, 1875, son of Henry A. Stevens and Laura A. Southwick, in Onawa, Iowa.

Married BERNICE BEATRICE CRANE in Frankfurt, Michigan.

Children:

THADDEUS SOUTHWICK STEVENS
Elsie Stevens
Sybil Stevens
Lawrence Crane Stevens

Died March 5, 1960 in Springfield, Illinois

Little is remembered of the career of Albert David Stevens (known as "A.D." to his friends and colleagues), but there must certainly be a wealth of records that survive, judging from what is known about him by my father. A.D. was a partner in the law firm Stevens & Herndon along with one Gray Herndon, undoubtably a descendent of Archer Gray and Rebecca Day Herndon and therefore my mother's blood kin. Their offices were in the Illinois Building on the west side of the square in Springfield, a magnificent art deco edifice.

The A.D. Stevens home is still a very prominent house -- although no longer in the family -- on the north side of Washington Park, a large tudor style house standing across Williams street from the historic Yates Mansion, where a descendent A.D.'s law partner now resides, himself a prominent lawyer.

As his biographical sketch recounts, A.D. was a Springfield city attorney and served on the Board of Election Commissioners of Sangamon County. It is also known that he was a member of the Spaulding Commission which established Springfield's municipal power company and built Lake Springfield, securing inexpensive water and electricity that we enjoy to this day and expect to enjoy for many more generations.

A web search reveals a case in which Stevens & Herndon represented the interests of a community of farmers against a Railroad company that wanted to shut down a line that had served the community. In the history of The Toluca Marquette and Northern Railroad by Nancy Piper, we find:

Public Versus the Railroad

The people retained the law firm of Stevens & Herndon of Springfield and appointed representatives from each school district to try to raise funds and inform the public. According to the January 29, 1925 edition of the Henry News Republican Newspaper the following committee members were elected: Union School District- Doss King and Ray Eddingfield; West College School District - Walter Helper and Henry Shields; Center School District- Dan McKirgan; Clear Creek School District - Frank Kochler and Art Westerlund; Bobbit School District - Mark Kays and Fred Stansell; Union School District - Tony Glenn; Arnold School District - Dot Judd and Dewey Spear; French School District- Ralph French, Wilbur Mann and A. Capponi.

The Public Hearing is Scheduled

At10:00 AM, Friday, February 13, 1925, a public hearing was scheduled in the Hopkins Township high school at Granville for the commission to hear the plea of abandonment. The firm Newman, Poppenhousen, Stern and Johnston of Chicago appeared for the C&A railroad, while Stevens & Herndon of Springfield were hired by the Illinois Agricultural Association and the Marshall-Putnam Farm Bureau to represent the interest of the people. According to the February 12, 1925 edition of the Henry News Republican Newspaper, a “valiant effort” was made by the villages along the line to save the branch. Posters were put up that were signed by the Granville Merchant’s Association, the Greater Toluca Club and the Magnolia Commercial Club. The article stated that most of the people of the eastern part of Putnam county were expected to appear for the hearing and a special train would run for the hearing because of bad roads in the area. The train would leave Toluca at 8:30 AM and would “return in time for farmers to do their chores.”

February 13, 1925 - The Hearing

The February 19, 1925 edition of the Henry News Republican Newspaper stated that approximately 500 people from the surrounding area attended the hearing. Both sides had to present their case to Commissioner Clark of the Illinois Commerce Commission, who was gathering testimony to present to the Commission. Based on the information gathered at the meeting, the Commission would make a decision whether or not to allow the abandonment of the railroad.

The railroad’s law firm contended that the line “traversed waste country that was of little value agriculturally.” The people’s defense brought in F.E. Fuller, a farm advisor who testified that it passed through rich farm land. His testimony was based on “his intimate knowledge of agricultural pursuits through the territory served by this branch road”. Next the people’s defense had merchants from Granville show their freight bills, which amounted to $800 - $1,100 a year. They alleged the railroad had purposely neglected business “through failure to solicit, late shipments and poor service on perishables”. One merchant claimed that the railroad had taken five days to ship a car of potatoes from Granville to Streator. Another merchant claimed that if perishables arrived on Saturday afternoon, they were not available until Monday.
Magnolia, who had the most to lose, stated that before the railroad was built, there were no businesses in Magnolia. The village now had a saw mill, lumber yard, elevator and bank. A. Hecht testified that the annual income from the saw mill was $22,000. He alleged that this mill would close if the railroad was allowed to discontinue. The defense also contended that the elevator’s income would be seriously affected. It was the largest in Marshall or Putnam County, with a capacity of 70,000 bushels of grain. The owner of the elevator, H.E. Hutton testified that carloads of grain were billed out for a week before being moved. The people’s defense contended that this was evidence the C&A railroad was not trying to make the line pay.

After all the testimony from both sides, a final hearing was scheduled for 10:00 AM, Friday, February 27th at Toluca, Illinois. The Commission ruled in favor of the public and the railroad was not allowed to discontinue service.

C&A Wins Right to Abandon

The C&A railroad finally won the right to abandon the railroad. The railroad had continued to lose money. In July of 1926, only three passenger fares were sold in Magnolia. The Interstate Commerce Commission recommended on Monday evening, August 15, 1926, that the railroad, which was now the in hands of receivers, be allowed to discontinue operation of the RT&N railroad. The Commission granted the abandonment in February of 1927 and the railroad ceased operations on midnight April 23, 1927. The stock was immediately sold to John R. and Lura Cox.

Although Stevens & Herndon lost this case, it reveals the kind of lawyers they were.
Biographical sketch extracted from History of Illinois and Her People, Prof George W. Smith, American Historical Society, Inc 1927:

"Albert D. Stevens [known to his friends and associates as A.D. Stevens] is one of the representative members of the bar of Springfield, capitol city of Illinois, and he has served continuously since 1912 as legal advisor for the city government, besides which he has been a member of the Board of Election Commissioners of Sangamon County.

"Mr. Stevens claims the Hawkeye State as the place of his nativity, but on the maternal side is a representative of one of the honored pioneer families of Illinois. He was born on the 10th of September, 1875, at Onawa, Iowa, and is a son of Judge Henry A. and Laura (Southwick) Stevens, the former of whom was born at St. John, New Brunswick, Canada [Ed. note: Henry A. Stevens was born in Sheffield County (probably South Stuckely), Quebec. His father, John M. Stevens, was born at St. John], and the latter of whom was born and reared in Illinois, where their marriage was solemnized and where they continued to reside until their removal to Iowa. Mrs. Stevens was a daughter of William and Levica (Baxter) Southwick [Ed. note: Laura (Southwick) Stevens was a daugher of William and Louvicy (Proctor) Southwick], her father having been a native of Pennsylvania [Ed. note: conflicts with known facts], a birthright member of the Society of Friends [also not true], and having settled in Illinois about the year 1820 [Ed. note: 1818 is the correct year], as one of the sterling pioneers of Sangamon County. Judge Henry A. Stevens became a prominent member of the bar in Iowa, where also he served as Judge of the Probate Court, and he continued his residence in that state until his death [Ed. note: Henry A. Stevens and his family, according to other biographical sketches and verified by the Springfield, Illinois City Directories, returned to Springfield about 1875 or 1876 and lived his remaining life there, as a member of the Sangamon County bar and as Sangamon County Probate Judge - not in Iowa], which occurred in 1910, his wife having passed away in 1893. Of the three children the first born is Bertha, who resides in the city of Chicago; Albert D., of this review, was the next in order of birth and is the only son, and Laura, the youngest of the children, died in infancy.

"Albert D. Stevens is indebted to the public schools for his earlier educational discipline, and in 1899 he was graduated from the law department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor [Ed. note: Albert D. Stevens is listed as a non-graduate in the Alumni Catalog, U of M, 1837-1921]. He passed the ensuing three years in professional work in the city of Chicago [Ed. note: conflicts with the birth of his eldest son, Thaddeus, at Joplin, Missouri, on April 25, 1901, and with Thaddeus' second-hand account that his father was unsuccessfully attempting to operate a brick-making business in Joplin at the time of his birth], and since that time has been engaged in active and successful General practice in Springfield, as one of the able and honored members of the bar of Sangamon County. His political allegiance is to the democratic party, he and his wife hold membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and hs is a member of the Sangamo Club and the [Illini] County Club.

"At Frankfort, Michigan, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Stevens and Miss Bernice B. Crane, who was born and reard in that state and who is a daughter of Lawrence W. and Annetta (Rolinson) Crane, her father having long been a prominent figure in connection with the lumber industry in Michigan. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens have four children: Thaddeus, Elisie [Ed. note: Elsie according to David L. Stevens], Sibyl and Larry."

Bernice Beatrice Crane 1879 - 1954

Born July 31, 1879, daughter of Lawrence W. Crane and Annette Rawlinson, in South Frankfort, Michigan.

Married ALBERT DAVID STEVENS at Frankfort, Michigan.

Children:

THADDEUS SOUTHWICK STEVENS
Elsie Stevens
Sybil Stevens
Lawrence Crane Stevens

Died in 1954.

Lyna Chase 1880 - 1950

Born Oct. 14, 1880, daughter ofCharles Dennison Chase and Grace Metcalfe, in Alton, Illinois.

Married LATHAM TIMOTHY SOUTHER Dec. 8, 1903 at St. Louis, Missouri.

Children:

Nancy Grace Souther
Mary Louise Souther
ELIZABETH LATHAM SOUTHER m. THADDEUS SOUTHWICK STEVENS
Howard Chase Souther
Margaret Chase (Polly) Souther

Attended Monticello Seminary at Godfrey, Illinois, 1895-98, as did her mother and grandmother before her as well as her daughter, Elizabeth.

She deserves equal credit with her husband Latham for saving the Elijah Iles House by moving it and making it their home in 1910.

She was a good friend of world-renowned Springfield poet Vachel Lindsay, and entertained him at her home at least once around 1920, according to our grandmother. The documentary evidence of this friendship is found in a note from the poet to Lyna inscribed in a volume by Ralph Adams Cram entitled Walled Towns.

She was a founding member of the Springfield Art Association and participated in the creation of Springfield's municipal flag. She was an accomplished landscape artist and the elder sibling of two important American artists, Frank Swift Chase and Edward Leigh Chase.

Latham Timothy Souther 1874 - 1948

Born July 31, 1874 in Springfield, Illinois to George Howard Souther and Nancy Emily (Nannie) Latham.

Married LYNA CHASE Dec. 8, 1903 at St. Louis, Missouri.

Children:

Nancy Grace Souther
Mary Louise Souther
ELIZABETH LATHAM SOUTHER
Howard Chase Souther
Margaret Chase (Polly) Souther

Died April 15, 1948 in Springfield.

Purchased the oldest house in Springfield and moved it from its original location at Sixth & Cook Streets to 1825 S. Fifth Street, thereby saving it from demolition to make room for the First Christian Church. Now known as the Elijah Iles House, it has been moved to Seventh & Cook Streets in order to ensure its preservation.

To the far left of the photo, the Price-Wheeler Mansion can be seen. Various apartments in that old house were the residences of my brother Tom and sister Joan during the late 1980's. The present location of the Iles House next door to the Price-Wheeler Mansion is at the former address of our great-great-grandfather, Henry A. Stevens according to the Springfield City Directory.

We know Latham Souther for his role in preserving the Elijah Iles House, but he also played a role in the life of Vachel Lindsay that is not generally known. Souther was the Trust officer for the Lindsay estate and a long-time Lindsay family friend. Neither Latham nor Lyna Souther are mentioned by name in any of the Lindsay biographies, but Latham's name appears in at least two of Lindsay's preserved letters and a book with an incription by Lindsay to Mrs. Latham Souther is held in the Sangamon Valley Collection, a gift of Betty S. McMinn.

Masters, Edgar Lee Vachel Lindsay, A Biography, p. 334-336:

In the year after his mother died he suffered a complete nervous breakdown from which he never wholly recovered.

Fast following upon this came the legal and business matters of settling her estate. Philistine Springfield now saw its opportunity to get rid of Lindsay. He loved the old residence where he was born and had grown up. He had chosen Springfield for his own for life. To send him into exile unfriendly people in Springfield fomented an artifical disagreement between Lindsay and his sisters, one of whom then lived in China, and one in Cleveland, by which Lindsay lost occupancy of the house. Thus moved out of his ancestral abode, it was turned into a boarding house. The old heirlooms were packed in the closets, the miniatures of the Nicholases and the Vachels were locked away, and what Lindsay called "the fat rich illiterate, climacteric women of Springfield" had an enormous satisfaction in this circumstance, and in keeping well-disposed heirs on the warpath by a crossfire of "financial advice." Such are his own words. He dreamed that a Springfield university would have put these marplots right, and grieved that it was not yet established. Thus, with his father dying in 1918, and his mother in 1922, and with the loss of this beloved house, his city passed from his hands too, the city of his special choice and illimitable dreams. His world collapsed in ruins all at one fell swoop. His woe had come from those who hated poetry and the whole poetry movement, with a deadly hatred, as Lindsay declared, and so with Lindsay's departure believed that the future of Springfield was in their hands. After Lindsay was gone and was thus out of their way they could, without the offense of his presence, show Springfiled visitors the room in which Lindsay was born, and the room where he wrote and drew, which contained furniture made by Lindsay with his own hands when he was a boy of thirteen. "All the fat females who are so lustful of useless power, who brought this about, not one of them ever willingly opened a book in her life." So wrote Lindsay to me from Spokane in 1927. In this letter Lindsay siad that he had not had a five-year uphill fight for nothing, but that he was settled happily in Spokane, with an entirely new start that he would not give up for the world. Yet in about two years he was back in Springfield, for to quote the letter again, "I am not going to be robbed of Central Illinois by anyone, however deft and powerful they may be. The word Springfield is written in letters of Utopian gold, is going into every paper and book I write till I die. It will be the mystic city of America. Think of all those people in Springfield pawing my things over, and showing them to visitors, as though I was the 'dear departed.' They ran me out to do it, but I will make Springfield a beautiful city yet."
What should Lindsay do now, thus practically run out of Springfield?

ibid, p. 354 calls the contract for the old house "onerous".

From Ruggles:

Page 372-373 --

Yet his spirit was not at rest. There were days when he hated and was homeless. At this time, writing to Masters, he charged that after his mother's death he had been "banished" from his town and "lost" the home that was his by right owing to the machinations of those whom he called, on a rising note of fury, "the fat rich illiterate climacteric women of Springfield."

"My father, my mother my ancestral home and my city, the very city of my special choice and illimitable dreams -- all lost at one fell swoop ... because a few fat illiterate rich women hated to whole New Poetry movement and all it implied with a deadly hatred."

He was writing on June 28, 1927. Eighteen months earlier, he had hurled his tirade against the clubwomen of America soon after he and Elizabeth walked by, almost like strangers, the house of his boyhood. Again it was in the recollection of that unspeakably dispiriting glimpse that he now told Masters: "The whole house looks like the wrath of God."

He seriously declared to Masters that it was the Springfield bankers' wives, his lifelong enemies, an "absolutely close corporation," who in 1922 had run him out.

"Lustful of useless power ... those fat females," cried Lindsay, had deliberately fomented a disageement among him and his sisters abouth the handling of the property -- "the whole thing was to give the local trust companies fat pickings on a hundred thousand dollar estate entirely out of debt..."

Since 1921 the management of Lindsay's estate, a part of which was mortgaged, had been in the hands of a Springfield bank. The officer directly responsible for the administering was an old family friend; he had reported to Mrs. Lindsay and after her death to her three children. Then for a year the house was rented to a private family -- though Vachel, before his move to Spokane, still kept his books and papers there -- after which the Wakefields occupied it on their furlough home in 1923. When Olive and Paul returned to China, it was Joy, the youngest but most practical of the heirs , who with the consent of the others made the decision to rent the house furnished to the Business and Professional Women's Club.

All this Lindsay ignored in his letter to Masters, which, written in a blinding nervous rage, was yet the source of the account, was yet the source of the account of his leaving Springfield later given by Masters in his biography of Lindsay.

Masters had his own grudge against the Philistine small cities of the Midwest. He swallowed his friend's extravagant claims greedily and entire, making no allowances for a state of mind indicated even by the deteriorating handwriting, and replying, "I never have read of anything more infamous except in books of history ... Be sure history will want the story."

From Ruggles, paraphrasing and quoting Lindsay:

. . . the bank executive and supposed good friend who was handling the estate and who "does not want me in Springfield in that house. He has always considered it sheer impudence for me to write books. . . ."

Masters biography of Lindsay, which appeared in 1935, must have mortified Latham and Lyna Souther. Although it is not known whether they read the book, it is practically inconceivable that they would not have been aware of it. Lyna may or may not have been one of the bankers' wives Lindsay complaned about. It is not positively known. Lyna was the wife of the banker he told Masters was trying to prevent his return to

Chenetier, Marc, editor, Letters of Vachel Lindsay, Burt Franklin & Co., New York 1979

Exerpt from letter to Ben and Joy Blair, December 30, 1926, p. 374:

"I think the sooner the Springfield property is sold off, the better. George Greenwood of Spokane, Vice President fo the Old National Bank and Cashier here, is going to begin to urge Latham Souther to sell all the rest of the Springfield property as soon as is possible, and sensible. Latham seems to respect Greenwood's letters much more than he does my own. Greenwood seems to be able to write in that mysterious trust company phraseaology, which indicates to your real business man that business is being transacted.

"I was very much pleased that you two were pleased over the sale of the Lawrence Avenue properties. I know you believe in the sale of the Fifth and Edwards Street property. I have urged it all along and I am going to ask George Greenwood to urge it in my name, and Elizabeth's. In this she heartily concurs. If you ever are inclined to protest, write us, of course, but I fancy you are still of the same mind."

Expert from letter to Harriet Monroe, December 14, 1927, p. 417:

"The trust officer of my Springfield estate cannot write me a single letter without spatting me on the wrist for continuing to be a poet. He is forced to to approve of my old work."

Ellen Ann Ferguson 1863 - 1953

Born March 15, 1863, daughter of Dennis K. Ferguson and Mary Magdelene Dutton, in Salem, Roanoke Co., Virginia.

Married EDGAR WILLIS ARNOLD March 7, 1886 in Virden, Illinois.

Children:

Edith Ethel Arnold
George Edwin Arnold
EDGAR ANDREW ARNOLD m. BERTHA ESTELLE LEWIS
John Homer Arnold
May Melvina Arnold

Died 1953

Edgar Willis Arnold 1855 - 1932

Edgar Willis Arnold 1855 - 1932

Born December 17, 1855, son of Thomas Arnold and Maranda Woods, in Morgan County, Illinois.

Married ELLEN ANN FERGUSON March 7, 1886 in Virden, Illinois.
Children:

Edith Ethel Arnold
George Edwin Arnold
EDGAR ANDREW ARNOLD m. BERTHA ESTELLE LEWIS
John Homer Arnold
May Melvina Arnold

Died 1932